DOUGLAS SLOCOMBE

(10 February 1913 - 22 February 2016)

Although I had seen many of the films Douglas Slocombe had photographed, it wasn’t until 1963 that I made a note of his name from the credits of Joseph Losey’s The Servant, in which the lighting and the photography were some of the best I had ever encountered, the whole look of the film being sharply contrasted in black and white, the chiaroscuro effect, a trick Slocombe used even for films in colour which he shot as if they were in monochrome. He started out as a photojournalist for Life magazine and Paris-Match before World War II, was a newsreel cameraman during the hostilities and subsequently joined Ealing Studios at the end of the war. After some short documentaries, his first feature film work (uncredited) was on San Demetrio London (1943), Ealing’s account of the Battle of the Atlantic. More films for Ealing followed including Dead of Night, The Captive Heart, Hue and Cry, The Loves of Joanna Godden, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, Mandy, Lease of Life, The Titfield Thunderbolt and umpteen others. His range was enormous, taking in all genres from comedy and drama to horror (Taste of Fear, Circus of Horrors), musicals (The Young Ones, Jesus Christ Superstar), historical adventure (The Blue Max, The Lion in Winter, Julia, Nijinsky), action movies (Rollerball, Caravans) and even that unofficial James Bond movie Never Say Never Again. Steven Spielberg used Slocombe for three of his Indiana Jones films and for second unit work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Having worked on some 80 films Slocombe retired at age 76 following Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Many of these films were outstanding because of Slocombe’s expertise and, if you think about such classics as It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), Dance Hall (1950), The Man in the White Suit (1951), Davy (1958), The Boy Who Stole a Million (1960), The L-Shaped Room (1952), Freud (1962), A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), Robbery (1967) and The Music Lovers (1970), they were all notable for their cinematography and, as with The Servant and Raiders of the Lost Ark (for which Slocombe never used a light meter) it is always the appearance of the film that is most memorable. Douglas Slocombe certainly made an unforgettable contribution to the film industry for which, in 2008, he was awarded an OBE.

MICHAEL DARVELL